The history of Chanel and cinema dates back to the golden years of Hollywood. In the 1930s, Gabrielle Chanel, the brand’s infamous founder, was invited by the American movie producer Samuel Goldwyn to dress the stars of the day. Later, in France, during the Nouvelle Vague, Chanel designed iconic outfits for the likes of Brigitte Bardot, Romy Schneider, and Jeanne Moreau; on Jean Renoir’s 1931 masterpiece The Rules of the Game, it’s Chanel’s elegant costumes that drive the drama and have been imitated ever since.

In 2025, 100 years after Chanel arrived in the UK, the company is still intertwined with the silver screen, as demonstrated by their partnership with the British Film Institution. Since 2022, the annual BFI & Chanel Filmmaker Awards have celebrated and provided financial support to bold, audacious filmmakers for their next even bolder, more audacious projects. Past winners include Luna Carmoon (Hoard), Pinny Grylls (Grand Theft Hamlet), and Savanah Leaf (Earth Mama).

For this year’s BFI & Chanel Filmmaker Awards, a jury of Tilda Swinton, Edward Enninful OBE, and Ben Roberts selected three winners: Harry Pillion for Pillion; Sandhya Suri for Santosh; and The Neurocultures Collective along with Steven Eastwood for The Stimming Pool. Below, we speak to the aforementioned filmmakers about their relationship with cinema, what makes their projects stand out, and why we should keep an eye out for them in the future.

Harry Lighton: writer and director of Pillion

After its sold-out screening at the BFI London Film Festival, Pillion will reach UK cinemas on November 28, which will allow Christmas to come early: it is, after all, a gay BDSM romcom whereby the meet-cute is on December 25 itself. Less typical is the first date between Colin (Harry Melling), an introverted traffic warden who lives with his parents, and tall, tough Ray (Alexander Skarsgard), a biker who suggests having sex outside Primark at 5pm. Once Ray, who’s usually clad in leather or nothing at all, reveals his domineering tendencies, Colin happily submits, even if it means he has to sleep on the floor by the bed.

Mixing pain with pleasure, Pillion is a British movie that won acclaim at Cannes, where Harry Lighton won a screenwriting prize for what the Guardian heralded as a “BDSM Wallace and Gromit”. “I don’t actively set-out to push boundaries, but I have a very bad attention span,” says Lighton, who won Best Short Film at the BAFTAs in 2017 for Wren Boys. “I get bored quickly, and for me watching something innovative – whether it’s British or not – is a bit like drinking a Red Bull. It keeps me glued to the screen. I’m my most engaged when discovering a world, character, or formal approach that feels new to me, and I let that guide my filmmaking process.” He adds, “I find whenever I make something I think is boundary-pushing, someone then shows me some obscure film from the 60s that did a similar thing. But that’s part of the fun.”

For Lighton’s next feature, he says the cash prize will help him develop ideas without having to take jobs to pay the bills. “I want to use a chunk of the money to make a proof-of-concept for one of those ideas that involves hidden cameras, football crowds, and a sprinkling of BDSM!” As for what Pillion does that no other film can do, the director declares it to have the best Mexican Surfboard (a wrestling move) ever committed to camera. “But the credit for that belongs to Harry Melling’s Pilates instructor. And someone will probably now show me a Mexican Surfboard from an obscure 60s film that blows mine out the water.”

Santosh, 2025(Film still)

Sandhya Suri: writer and director of Santosh

A gritty crime-thriller about corruption in the Indian police force, Santosh announced Sandhya Suri to the world last year when it was selected for the official competition at Cannes and picked as the UK’s Oscar submission. “I think it’s interesting and important for British filmmaking to be known globally for many distinctive styles beyond social realism,” says Suri, who made her debut in 2005 with the documentary I for India. “Personally I love to connect with an idea then see how a form develops which is bold and still organically originating from the story.”

In the fiercely feminist film, a widow, Santosh (Shahana Goswami), inherits her late husband’s job as a cop and investigates a local murder in rural northern India. Revealing disturbing levels of power imbalance, the story was inspired by the 2012 Nirbhaya case, in which a woman was gang raped and murdered in Delhi. “I think for me it is always about saying something or asking questions I myself am interested in exploring, of having something of substance to anchor the whole thing,” says Suri. “It is about layering and embracing complexity and not being reductive, but that does not mean dismissing ‘the pleasure of the spectator’. Cinema is a form of entertainment after all and I embrace using all its tools to lean into the genre aspect of Santosh for example.”

Suri started work on Santosh in 2016, nearly a decade before its eventual Cannes premiere. The director’s next feature, an adaptation of JG Ballard, will hopefully not take as long. “This particular dystopian world is so incredibly unique and offers such exciting opportunities to use the craft of cinema,” she says. “I feel very positive about its momentum.” As for what makes Suri stand out as a cinematic voice, she says, “I think that clarity of vision and lack of fear is something I possess, and which has helped me in my work.”

The Stimming Pool, 2025(Film still)

The Neurocultures Collective and Steven Eastwood: co-creators of The Stimming Pool

The Stimming Pool isn’t just like nothing you’ve seen before – it’s like multiple films you haven’t seen before. Directed by the Neurocultures Collective (Sam Chown-Ahern, Georgia Bradburn, Benjamin Brown, Robin Elliott-Knowles, Lucy Walker) and Steven Eastwood, the hybrid movie is almost unclassifiable. Neither fiction nor documentary, it’s a collection of overlapping stories that reveal what the filmmakers call “autistic cinema”. In one section, red dots and lines reveal where a neurodivergent woman’s eyes are focusing; in another, a zombie horror is drawn and later animated. Bringing it all together is a climax with the young artists in an empty pool, stimming while a roaming camera captures their creative energies.

“We wanted to feel free to experiment and try to do something on our own terms, differently with the medium,” says Eastwood. “It’s not just the stories – it’s the form the stories take. Often the form constrains the story. We wanted to break that.” Likewise, Chown-Ahern notes, “It’s so unusual, and it goes to so many different spaces. Because it’s been made by five neurodivergent autistic people, the beauty is that we all bring our own experiences of being autistic and our film knowledge.” Brown adds, “It’s not about autism; it’s about different ways of living in the world.”

As for winning the award, Elliott-Knowles says, “It’s great that we’re being recognised for our message that we’re trying to get across.” Bradburn points out that The Stimming Pool “doesn’t make sense in a chronological, narrative way” – rather, it’s a sensory experience that plunges the audience into a world they might not understand. “This is a question we ask ourselves as autistic people all the time,” says Bradburn. “How are we supposed to exist in this world that isn’t built for us?”